The offbeat personal finance blog for responsible people.

Black Coffee: Up-and-Coming Undertakers and Ungrateful Takers

Welcome to another rousing edition of Black Coffee, your off-beat weekly round-up of what’s been going on in the world of money and personal finance.

The West is on fire this weekend, especially in my neck of the woods. Depending on where you live in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, the temperatures range from 80 degrees (Fahrenheit) along the coast to 113 inland.

Down by the Colorado River, in Needles, California, it’s even hotter; the weatherman is promising that the mercury will top out at 123 degrees today.

On July 1st, Google Reader will be officially discontinued — so if you use it as your RSS feed, you’ll have to switch over to another service, such as Feedly.

Credits and Debits

Debit: Despite Friday’s upswing, gold, silver and copper prices plunged this quarter. Especially troubling is copper’s continued divergence from stocks and, now, increasing general market volatility. All of these indicators are warning us that an ill-wind blows. Is something big coming our way? I think so, but only time will tell.

Credit: Did you see this? A Virginia funeral home is now offering a drive-thru viewing window. I know. One clever commenter suggested that the new service be called “Grieve and Go.” Heh.

Credit: Virginia isn’t the first state to have a drive-through funeral parlor; California has had one for awhile now. The viewing window at the California mortuary happens to be bullet proof, although I’m not sure why. You only die once.

Credit: The Virginia mortician might have copied his idea for the drive-thru window, but he has a few cutting-edge funeral products of his own. For example, he offers mourning family members rings, pendants and other jewelry that feature the fingerprints of their expired loved ones.

Credit: Whether or not you believe those new products are tasteful, I think everyone can agree that innovation in the funeral industry is far from, well … dead.

Debit: Speaking of the dead, it may be four years since the Great Recession came to a merciful end, but the US economy still barely fogs a mirror. The government revised its first-quarter GDP growth rate from a paltry 2.4% to an even more anemic 1.8% — and that’s following barely-breathing growth of just 0.4% during the last quarter of 2012.

Debit: The drop was due to lower personal consumption expenditures than initially forecast — and that may end up being just the excuse the Fed is looking for to continue their money printing campaign that’s responsible for the latest stock market bubble.

Debit: Meanwhile, a recent survey found that 76% of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck. Of those, slightly more than one in four have no savings at all. Wow.

Debit: Ironically, those poor people without any savings at all are essentially earning the same amount of interest as the 50% of Americans who have squirreled away at least three month’s of emergency expenses in a savings account.

Debit: Unlike savings rates, mortgage interest rates are skyrocketing, which can’t be good news for the housing market. The 30-year fixed rate on Zillow’s Mortgage Marketplace climbed a half-percent last week to 4.38%; that’s the highest rate since June 2011.

Debit: Needless to say, the current interest rate environment is frustrating a lot of people — especially savers. One disaffected fellow is facing 13 years in prison for vandalism after scribbling anti-bank messages — in water-soluble chalk — on three Bank of America sidewalks. Thirteen years. Really?

Debit: Apparently, the defendant claims that one of the banks where he scrawled his diatribes said they spent $6,000 to clean up the chalk messages. Six-thousand dollars. Really?

Debit: Even if it did cost $6000 to clean their sidewalk, you’d think Bank of America would, um, chalk it up as a cost of doing business and write-off the loss. After all, this is the same company that received $45 billion in interest-free loans from taxpayers a few years ago. Yes, really.

Congratulations to Deb, who won a $20 Starbucks gift card! She was one of five people who correctly guessed one of the only three Top 10 movies of 2004 that I haven’t seen (and probably never will). Those movies were: The Polar Express, The Day After Tomorrow, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Deb’s name was pulled in a random draw among all of the correct guessers.

Thanks to everyone who participated. I’ll have another contest soon.

Other Useless News – My New York Times Op-Ed Piece

In case you missed it, this week I was honored to have an op-ed piece in the New York Times on tipping at restaurants. I know. Check out my libertarian position, if you dare. Then read some of the comments left by some of the Times’ more liberal readers who disagreed with me.

Every week I feature the most interesting question or comment — assuming I get one, that is. And folks who are lucky enough to have the only question in the mailbag get their letter highlighted here whether it’s interesting or not! You can reach out to me at: Len@LenPenzo.com

Funerals are not the somber, respectful scenes that I recall. I have seen shorts and flip flops worn as if it were casual Friday.
Also, a staff member we spoke with by phone to arrange my mother’s cremation said she hoped we did not need a memorial service as they were “booked to the hilt”.

Dear Len, As a person who had a second job as a waitress for 17 years, and enjoyed the work very much, this is why restaurants ad an automatic gratuity for large parties. You make more money waiting on 4 four tops, over a table of 16 if there is no added gratuity tacked on the large check. The large check arrives for the party, cheap Uncle Louie who never eats out decides to play the hero and grabs the check, the amount of which shocks him. He chases everyone out before him, pays the check and leave a $20. bill on the table for the tip, as well as the floors a mess from the toddlers who have thrown their food all over the place and that food has been ground into the carpet by the now absent diners, all of which the waitress has to clean before resetting the table. The other waiter who has given equally good service to the 4 four tops has gotten $20. EACH from them, and has less clean up to do. Most people tip well, and appreciate good service. I must say (don’t scream sexism at me, this is how it is, and speaking the truth is not sexism, on the whole men tip much better than women) that I was happiest working at a dark, shabby steakhouse which served large steaks, a salad and baked potato as the bulk of the meals. There was literally no vegetable available if a person wanted one. The customers were 80% men, and they were regulars, and working there was more like hostessing my own party every week day at lunch. I memorized the names of all the customers, and their favorite drinks. I’d be happy to see them, and I would say, “Mr. Graham, I enjoy having you and your men at my table for lunch, please ask for me in the future because I like waiting on you.” They got a kick out of not having to put in a drink order and having their favorite drink arrive as if by magic, and they enjoyed having their names and their meal preferences remembered. The tips were great, the atmosphere happy for all concerned. For me, being a waitress was a profession, not something I felt was demeaning. Even at this place, large parties had the gratuity added. The men would often leave an additional tip besides what was required, because they were happy with the service.

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